ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

Game performance improvements are something we are constantly working on as a team, especially for Cyrodiil and other heavy-load scenarios. It's an important ongoing effort for us, and it's one for which your feedback is critical. We've read your recent feedback about game performance in Cyrodiil and understand how frustrating it is to have your abilities or character become unresponsive in the midst of a huge, important battle. We want you to know we do read your feedback, and we are dedicated to continuing our efforts to improve your overall experience.

There are a few key things we need everyone to know. When a large number of players clumps together and spams PFX-heavy abilities, it will cause slow-down. We've put in a number of fixes and tools to help reduce this, but the reality is there will always be some slow-down when this happens.

We've been tracking crashes in Cyrodiil, and the number one client crash we see come through our crash reporting tool is one that occurs due to broken or out-of-date add-ons. If you are frequently crashing in Cyrodiil, we strongly urge you to try playing with and without your add-ons to see if you experience any noticeable difference in crash frequency and game performance.

All that said, let's take a look at where we're at with efforts to improve game performance.

What have we done so far?

• We've fixed quite a few issues where effects were failing to clean up as they should. This has improved performance related to ability effects, but it is an ongoing effort.
• We put in a PFX slider to help with game performance in heavy combat situations where there is a high amount of PFX simultaneously firing off. Dropping this down to the minimum setting can help with lag in crowded areas. (Reducing graphics settings in general can provide better performance when in Cyrodiil, too.)
• The removal of Forward Camps has cut down on some of the player-character pile-up, which has helped game performance in Cyrodiil.

What more are we doing?

• Evaluating ability particle effects and fixing any issues we find with effects failing to clean up, or being too taxing, is an ongoing effort.
• We have a fix going in today (1.5.5) that will fix a region crash issue in Cyrodiil which was related to a scenario where someone could teleport to Wayshrines while still targeted for an attack (this could not be done on purpose—it just happened sometimes.)
• We have a fix for the issue where the game client gradually slows down over time when weapon swapping. We’re aiming to get this fix into the next incremental patch (1.5.6.)
• Our QA team hops onto the live servers to observe, take metrics, and report back on anything unusual they see.

If you are encountering severe lag, crashes, or unresponsive abilities in Cyrodiil, there are a few bits of info we'd like to get from you to help us further improve your experience.

• Do you have your PFX slider turned all the way down, to minimize particle effects load?
• Do you have your graphics turned down? If so, what are they turned down to?
• Are you using any add-ons? If so, which ones? (We are not trying to place blame on add-ons; rather, knowing which ones people are using may help us pinpoint potential issues.)

We hope that helps explain our past, current, and future efforts to improve game performance, particularly in Cyrodiil. Thanks again for your ongoing feedback and support.